Documentation

Everything you need to get two or more people editing the same project: installing the panel, hosting, joining, and the handful of things that usually go wrong.

Contents

Guide

Install

The panel is a CEP extension: a folder you unzip into the After Effects extensions directory. There is no installer and no background service. Full, copy-and-paste steps for both platforms are on the download page; the short version is:

Unzip into %APPDATA%\Adobe\CEP\extensions on Windows, or ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CEP/extensions on macOS.
Allow unsigned extensions once by setting PlayerDebugMode to 1.
Restart After Effects, then open Window, Extensions and pick Parallax.

To sign in, press Sign in inside the panel. Your browser opens this site, you approve the connection, and the panel is connected. If your browser cannot talk back to After Effects, the panel falls back to showing you an eight-character code to type at the device page.

Hosting a room

Hosting needs a plan, and needs the project to have been saved at least once — the panel sends your saved file to everyone who joins.

Open the project and save it.
In the panel, press Start hosting. Give the room a name if you like.
The panel shows a six-letter invite code. Share it with whoever is joining.

You stay in charge of the session: your machine orders every edit, so if two people change the same property at the same moment, the last change to reach you wins. Leaving the room closes it and the code stops working.

If your connection drops

The room survives a 60-second gap. Guests see a reconnecting notice and keep editing locally; when you come back, their work is merged in. After 60 seconds the room closes and everyone keeps their own copy of the project.

Joining a room

Joining is free and needs nothing open in After Effects.

Press Join in the panel and paste the invite code.
The host’s project and its footage transfer in the background. The project is saved under Documents/Parallax and media relinks as it arrives.
Edit. Your changes go out as you make them and theirs arrive as they make them.

Remote edits land on your undo stack as their own groups, named so you can tell them apart from your own work. Presence shows which comp and time everybody is on; Follow jumps you to a collaborator, and is always opt-in.

Public rooms

A host can mark a room public. Public rooms appear in the panel’s room list with the room name, the host’s display name and how many people are in them, so anyone with the panel can drop in without being handed a code — useful for classes, streams and open critique sessions.

Rooms are private unless you deliberately switch that on, and you can switch it back off at any point during a session. The capacity limit is the same either way.

What syncs

Everything that belongs to the project is shared; everything about how you personally are working is not.

Shared live	Private to each person
Property values, keyframes and expressions	Playhead and current time, playback, RAM preview
Layer create, delete, reorder, rename, flags, parenting	Selection, open comp, viewer zoom, work area
Effects, masks, shape groups and text animators	Panels, preview cache, quality settings
Folders, comps and their settings, footage	Undo history — remote edits arrive as their own groups
Presence: which comp and time each peer is on	—

Known limits

Value scrubs arrive when you release the mouse, because After Effects does not run scripts mid-drag.
A change to a layer nobody has selected is picked up by a background sweep, so within a few seconds rather than instantly.
Layer styles, markers and custom-value effect parameters are not synced yet.
Image sequences are not transferred automatically.

Troubleshooting

The invite code is rejected

Codes are six letters and are not case sensitive, but they do expire when the host closes the room. Ask the host to read theirs out again from the panel header.
If the host restarted After Effects, the old code is gone: hosting again produces a new one.
A code that was never valid usually means a typo between O and 0 or I and 1 — the panel never issues those characters, so re-read the code.

The room is full

Room capacity comes from the host's plan: 2 people on Duo, 10 on Studio, counting the host.
Someone who closed After Effects without leaving the room can hold a slot for up to a minute. Wait, then try again.
If you need more people at once, the host can move up a plan from their account page and restart the room.

The project never arrives

The host has to have saved the project at least once. An untitled project has no file to send.
Transfer happens in the background and large projects take a while; the panel shows progress. Leaving the panel open keeps it going.
If the transfer stalls, the guest can press Leave and join again — anything already received is reused rather than re-downloaded.

Footage is missing or offline

File-based footage is sent with the project and relinked as it lands. Until a file arrives you will see a placeholder in its place.
Image sequences are not transferred yet. Share those separately and point the guest at the same folder.
Footage that lives on a network volume is re-linked by path first. If the guest has that volume mounted at the same path, nothing is transferred at all.

The host is reconnecting

When the host drops off the network the room stays alive for 60 seconds and guests see a reconnecting notice.
If the host gets back inside that window everything resumes, including the edits made in the meantime.
If they do not, the room closes. Nothing is lost: every guest keeps their local copy of the project exactly as it stood.

The panel is not in the Extensions menu

Check the folder layout: the manifest must sit at extensions/AEMultiplayer/CSXS/manifest.xml, not one level deeper inside a second folder created by the unzip.
Unsigned extensions have to be allowed once per CEP version. If you are on a newer After Effects, repeat the PlayerDebugMode step for CSXS.12.
After Effects only scans for extensions at launch, so quit it fully and start it again.

Still stuck? Email support@parallaxplugin.com with the version number from the bottom of the panel and what you were doing when it went wrong.